Mermaids review

[Glinner]

Good news for people who don't believe gender non-conforming children should be told they're in the 'wrong' body, and may need a lifetime of drugs and/or surgery to 'fix' that.

twitter.com/lecanardnoir/status/1074664349854298113

I think the Gaimans of this world probably just want to support trans kids. As I would imagine many of us do. Now we just need to separate the children who'll grow up to be life long trans people from the ones who will grow out of it.

Which, of course, is insanely difficult.

The NHS need to step up and take the lead on this. The debate is being led by trans lobby groups, led by people wanting to validate their own decisions.

I've written in. Penny Mordent wanted an enquiry. They should wait for the results of that.

One of the 'trans' charities supporting Mermaids is Chrysalis - Gender Identity Matters which works with young 'trans' people in the south.

Its director is also a director at Adeptio Pharmaceuticals which is trying to secure Paediatric-use marketing authorisation. Paediatric-use marketing authorisations (PUMA) are granted by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for medical products that are intended exclusively for paediatric use, in patients younger than 18 years.

Just placing this here for future reference.

Now we just need to separate the children who'll grow up to be life long trans people from the ones who will grow out of it.
Which, of course, is insanely difficult.

Or even impossible. So we simply need to support children who are confused about gender issues until they are old enough to decide, as adults, whether to permanently alter their bodies.

They should not be told that they can change sex, and efforts should be made to help them to accept their bodies. Whilst also being taught that 'gender' can be ignored. This approach seems to be called 'conversion therapy' by genderists, though.

This is playing out in a similar way to the Kids company scandal.
As soon as people bother to take a look at mermaids and in particular what susie did, the support will disappear in a puff of smoke.

I hope so Biologi
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/16/kids-company-camila-batmanghelidjh-charity

I think the Mermaids scandal is going to be much, much worse than the Kids Company one. Essentially, all that Kids Company did wrong was to waste money. They wasted it in a fairly spectacular fashion, but that's pretty much what it amounted to.

Mermaids is seriously harming children. It's advocating that children and teenagers should be allowed to take drugs that will cause them lifelong damage. It's advocating that they be allowed to have irreversible surgery. They want to allow teenage boys to share changing facilities with teenage girls. To say they are a safeguarding nightmare is an understatement.

When it finally dawns on people what is going on here, and that Mermaids has been supported by establishment bodies such as the police, and been allowed to spread its pernicious ideology in schools, the scandal will be of epic proportions. The only mystery is why it hasn't happened already.

On the face of it they are perfectly legitimate- supporting kids who have gender dysphoria. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.
It is only when you read about susie green and Helen webberly and look at their sexist stereotype ideas, that you realise there is a major issue. To be fair it isn’t immediately obvious.

On that twitter thread there are a couple of posts about how Mermaids was going long before Susie Green got involved and how we shouldn't just link Mermaids with Susie Green. Has something happened with Green that she is no longer quite so fragrant, and also I thought she founded Mermaids?

@glinner Sterilising children, removing any chance of a sex life and using untested hormone treatment is at the very least a last resort. Thank you for doing this.

I have a question for you - do you think trans women are women?

soundcloud.com/user-407799333/mermaids-barbie-gijoe-jelly-babies-and-other-nonsense

I posted this on another thread - this is the sort of thing mermaids wastes money on. Teacher training.

Who knew a light spectrum was all the points between on and off, ie a dimmer switch . I confess to not having got beyond half way through.

HandsOff This is particularly pertinent from that article on Kids Company:
But no charity has a right to exist, and trustees have a duty to question the operational decisions of charity staff – especially where they are working with a client group as vulnerable as those in the care of Kids Company.

Batmanghelidjh is right to feel aggrieved. She is the classic scapegoat. Her original observation was profound – that traditional state structures (schools, the police, social services, the care system) were failing young people on the margins of society. Kids Company could have been part of the answer, but it was never the whole solution. That is its tragedy.

Another blogpost from Lisa Muggeridge about Kids Company and why the Guardian and other assorted movers and shakers of the liberal left were unable to see any problems with it, despite all the red flags (including its leader being involved with Iain Duncan Smith's think tank that sought to blame family breakdown rather than political decisions for child poverty).

idgeofreason.wordpress.com/2015/10/16/why-patrick-butler-didnt-see-a-problem-with-kids-company-and-why-it-matters/

Some might see some structural issues and blindspots that also appear here, with the current, often uninformed, support for Mermaids.

Oh, and here is Lisa again, praising the Mumsnet discussion about Kids Company:

idgeofreason.wordpress.com/2015/08/31/mumsnet-kids-company-and-online-politics/

Always be cautious of rules and regulations that you think are only applicable to your opponents, because your opponents will find a way to use them against you, too.

If safeguarding issues were raised at any organisation or group I support, I would wholeheartedly support a review. No organisation, especially one working with children, is above scrutiny. And any decent organisation would expect scrutiny and be fine with a review, happy in the knowledge that they had all safeguarding and financial procedures followed
The fact that Mermaids are fighting it so hard is a huge red flag in itself.

One of the 'trans' charities supporting Mermaids is Chrysalis - Gender Identity Matters which works with young 'trans' people in the south.

Its director is also a director at Adeptio Pharmaceuticals which is trying to secure Paediatric-use marketing authorisation. Paediatric-use marketing authorisations (PUMA) are granted by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for medical products that are intended exclusively for paediatric use, in patients younger than 18 years.

That's a very interesting, and alarming, connection. Do you have any links / screenshots to substantiate it? Would be good to get the relevant references on the thread.

Some people definately knew about Kids Company. I knew someone whose firm withdrew their pro-bono marketing support at quite an early stage after finding them chaotic and hard to work with. I assume a bit of probing by funders might have found the same.

That the problem with bandwagons; they have a momentum of their own and are hard to stop.

I am feeling more positive about the BigLottery review of Mermaids. Gilligan says he has a lot of material. If it is anything like the tape of a Mermaids training session that is being discussed on another thread, it will be hard to ignore. Child protection has to be paramount. When I used to write funding applications, you used to be asked to confirm that you did not expect the award to be contentious or controversial. If the same restrictions apply, the Mermaids bid is clearly ineligible.

I do hope this is resolved quickly. It is disheartening to hear that City guilds like the leather sellers are still making grants to them. At what point will they understand. We don't want Mermaids poisoning our children's minds and bodies.

Melamin Thank you for sharing. I skipped forward in chunks (but haven't listened to much of it yet)

If you skip to 1hr 14, the speaker is challenged and becomes very defensive but doesn't answer the points raised. wonder 'no debate' has been the stance
Also she says that (regarding sex segregated facilities) that if someone complains about the opposite sex (but trans) using them, you must find different facilities for the person who has complained as that is the law

At what point will they understand. We don't want Mermaids poisoning our children's minds and bodies.

They know but they don't care.

Lots of companies are very interest in funding an organisation which has control over what children learn about boundaries and self image.

Get them young enough and you can teach them anything, you can sell them anything you can mold them into anything you want them to be.

I too am gutted about Gaiman and hope that he’s done this as a knee jerk and not because he buys into the misogynistic, homophobic narrative that is the current activist agenda.

Actually really cross at how someone so reasonable can be so utterly blind to the immortality of Mermaids as a charity and buy the line that we want to make lives for trans kids harder.

Andrew Gilligan
@mragilligan
Susie Green says it's all going to be fine. Is that what the Big Lottery Fund has been telling Mermaids? Is the review just a PR exercise to validate their previous decision?

Lottery will still fund, an apology will also probably be issued, this is coming from a very very high position in government.

But again, the public are aware of what's happening, it's important as it looks more and more corrupt.

Only read the first few posts and remembered that SG has come out with some incredibly homophobic statements in the past, hasn't she.

Surprised that the paper linked is supporting her.

(But not really).

A whole bunch of countries don't just decide to quickly and stealthily make massive changes to laws that will affect the safeguarding of women and children at the same time by coincidence.

Transposers There is a lot of discussion about it on the other thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3452489-Mermaids-given-500-000-by-National-Lottery-Sunday-Times?pg=13

Thanks Melamin, I'll head over to that thread now